Little Boxes/ True Books

Microman: What Life Might Be Like If you Were Bill Gates, by "I.B. McIntosh" (Arsenal Pulp Press, $9.95).

Synopsis: Clip-job profile of Microsoft founder Gates, written in the second person to enhance the illusion that the reader actually

is Gates.

Representative quote: "Now you have a family of your own. You are the father of an actual living, breathing being named Jennifer, not just an entity called Microsoft."

Noteworthy flaw: After writing an entire book dripping with slacker sarcasm, author on last page says he "expects to one day fly as high" as Gates. Yeah, right.

Soul Traveler: A Guide to Out-of-Body Experiences and the Wonders Beyond, by Albert Taylor (Dutton, $19.95).

Synopsis: After seeing a Shirley MacLaine movie and attending a metaphysics course, the author becomes convinced his soul is separating from his body at night and traveling the cosmos.

Representative quote: "I floated through the front doors into a huge dining hall. The room was filled with humanoid figures dressed in nineteenth-century attire. I immediately thought of Gone With the Wind and smiled, because I never liked that movie."

Noteworthy flaw: They're called dreams, Al.

Paddy: The Classic Story of a Baby Beaver and the Naturalist Who Adopted Him, by R.D. Lawrence (The Lyons Press, $14.95).

Synopsis: New edition of the late 1970s story of a naturalist who rescues an orphaned beaver kit from a hawk and then raises it.

Representative quote: "He smelled musky, and sour, and there was also an odor of mushroom about him; I noticed a small leech sticking on his right ear as I put out my tongue and licked his face and his nose and mouth, all over his head, tasting his rankness, yet feeling no revulsion. The kit responded."

Noteworthy flaw: What about the needs of hungry hawks?

Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): book covers.